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Symantec Siteminder vs WSO2 Identity Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (14th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (15th)
WSO2 Identity Server
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Symantec Siteminder is designed for Single Sign-On (SSO) and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
WSO2 Identity Server, on the other hand, focuses on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), holds 2.6% mindshare, up 1.6% since last year.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Siteminder3.1%
Okta Platform10.3%
Microsoft Entra ID9.0%
Other77.6%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WSO2 Identity Server2.6%
Okta Platform14.3%
Auth0 Platform12.1%
Other71.0%
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.
Ritesh_Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Utilizing key management and seamless single sign-on integration for enhanced user profile management
WSO2 Identity Server's key management feature stands out as a particularly impactful feature for enhancing security. Additionally, from a user perspective, the self-user portal and user profile management capabilities are highly valuable. It allows users to manage their profiles, change passwords, and offers a self-care portal type of functionality. The single sign-on capability integrates seamlessly with various platforms, including Google, Facebook, LDAP, and Active Directory, which supports rapid product launches.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of this product to integrate with any third-party components and platforms."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."
"It is very scalable; we have a very large customer base: 75 million customers, and about 40 million log in a day, so the scalability is very good."
"It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"CA Single Sign-on has helped us a lot; the user only needs to use credentials once and then they can single sign-on into other websites which are already integrated into the CA Single Sign-on product."
"Comprehensive ecosystem."
"I would rate the solution's stability eight or nine out of ten."
"The product provides easy integration between API manager and IT server components."
"Some of the valuable features of the solution are the easy integration with processes, such as Single Sign-On, and overall WSO2 is straightforward and does not need customization."
"The solution gets the job done, and we don't have to do the main configuration."
"The single sign-on procedure itself, as well as the ability to connect to external user sources such as Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP servers, are the solution's most valuable features."
"The feature that I found most valuable was the ecosystem, which is very comprehensive and allowed me to find the components that I wanted to use, including the identity server and the API."
"The Identity Server has been able to manage our complete user base with ease - including authorization and authentication."
 

Cons

"The look and feel was not good in the earlier product."
"Although the policy server has sometimes spontaneously restarted, it’s mostly good."
"The policy store configuration, and tuning the policy store is a bit complex in ensuring it does not corrupt."
"The documentation is not good enough, particularly the installation documentation could be improved."
"The setup was not straightforward. I would give it a 7/10 rating - 1 being simple and 10 being complex."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"In future releases, I would like to see maybe more capabilities with some more modern authentication."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"The solution could improve its development from a user perspective."
"The solution seems to be pretty outdated."
"The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I found the initial setup to be very complex."
"This solution does not have BPM workflows already integrated, we had to integrate the BPM module externally. They do not provide full-featured auditing and certification modules out of the box."
"There needs to be a good support model and easy-to-understand documentation."
"The high availability architecture has to be improved."
"First, improvements have to been made in the high availability architecture. This has to do with the master-slave replication, and how the load balancing is handled between the identity servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"They should bring in some good pricing models to host the marketplace."
"I rate the product price an eight out of ten. There is a need to pay more for the extra features provided by the solution."
"I have found the solutions license is priced competitively compared to others."
"WSO2 Identity Server is not an expensive solution."
"At this time we are working with the open-source version."
"We have to take their support, but that is a minimal charge if I'm comparing it to other identity managers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Transportation Company
11%
Media Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Identity Server?
The pricing is currently the same as the API Manager, so it's not surprising. Since we used it primarily for SSO and the self portal, there were no additional pricing concerns.
What needs improvement with WSO2 Identity Server?
Currently, all required features are supported. If new use cases for artificial intelligence arise, it could be beneficial to incorporate those. However, for our current projects, WSO2 Identity Ser...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 Identity Server?
We deployed WSO2 Identity Server to fulfill our single sign-on (SSO) requirements. Whenever we implement the API Manager, instead of using the API Manager's inbuilt key manager, we use WSO2 Identit...
 

Also Known As

SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Nutanix, ELM, AlmavivA, BDigital, StubHub, M-creations, MedVision360
Find out what your peers are saying about Okta, Microsoft, Cisco and others in Single Sign-On (SSO). Updated: July 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.